cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

Now here is one to get you thinking because it is baffling me big time. I bought a new custom built pc last week which is basically the following:

MSI Z97 G45 mb
16gb ram
i7 4770k
2 x 1TB hdd raid 1
GeForce GTX770
X-Viper 1050w psu

It arrived last Friday and everything has been running nearly silent all week and as smooth as a baby's bum. In the past I have always had used raid 0 but i cried when a hdd failed which is why I had this one setup as raid 1. It has been eating away at me all week though because for what it is worth, everything gets 7.9 on the windows experience index apart from the hdds which got 5.9. Sooooooo, instead of going back to raid 0 I thought I thought i would setup raid 10. I ordered two identical hdds (so all 4 were the same) which arrived today and thought i would get up everything setup no problemo.

I installed the two new hdds and built the array no probs but right off the bat windows 7 (pro) was sluggish and the system restarted just as it was expanding files. I tried again and this time I heard one of the hdds powering on and off. I assumed it was one of the new hdds which was causing the system to become unstable so I took it in turn disconnecting both new hdds trying to work out which one it was. Turns out both of them were doing it so I disconnected both thinking I would go back to the original two drives.

Buuuuut, even they started doing it as soon as the win 7 installation starts. I even took it in turn disconnecting each of them so I was only running one hdd at a time and they all do the same, you can hear the hdds powering on and off every 10 seconds and after the installation gets from anything from 0-11% the system will restart.

Anyone got any ideas on what could be the problem? I am assuming it is either power or mb. It is a hell of a coincidence that it only started doing it when I made a new array and/or tried installaing a new OS. I didn't do anything dodgy when I put the new drives in, putting the new sata cables in and connecting the power cables was straight forward enough.

If it was a power issue (not that it is with a 1kw psu) you would have thought disconnecting the new drives would fix the problem but whatever is wrong it is doing it with even one drive running.

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. I am going to give tech support a ring tomorrow for what it is worth and see if they can shed any light on it. I can see it having to go back though :(

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

...And what exactly are the hard drives and how are they connected?

Also if all you're concerned with is getting a Windows Experience Index score of higher than 5.9 you are wasting your money. It is impossible with hard drives, because Microsoft has specifically capped the score for hard drives at... 5.9. It won't allow you to get a higher score without an SSD.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

sounds like PSU to me. Just cuz its 1kw does not mean all the rails are working

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

it's not, it was just winding me up that they were the weakest link. If they were already setup in raid 0 I wouldn't have thought anything of it but as it was raid 1 I knew there was room for improvement. I knew everything was running perfectly because I ran the hardest tests in 3dmark and for the first time every everything ran as smooth as a baby's bum.

All 4 hdds are Seagate ST1000DM003 and they are connected with brand new sata cables directly to the mb. Everything is brand new.

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:38 ----------

Hugh it is your ssd proping your score up. The score is based on the lowest scoring category and my cpu, graphics card and ram are all 7.9 but my overall score is 5.9 because that is what my hdds score. You score higher because you have got ssd's. The only reason i didnt got for them is because I saw Qas, Igini and someone else moaning about that a couple of weeks ago.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

Other than the PSU the other thing that springs to mind is the sata controller going screwey. Is it possible something in the bios changed in relation to disks after you put the others in and needs changing back?

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

nope, I checked that

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

Seagate drives are widely known for doing this, they are *very* sensitive to even the slightest power fluctuations. This "feature" causes the drive to immediately shut down when that happens, and it also happens a lot more often when multiple drives are connected to the same power supply.

The problem is somewhat compounded by your choice of ridiculously overspecced power supply. It's quite well known that Haswell CPUs make drastically fluctuating demands on the power supply and quite a lot of popular power supplies are too powerful and cannot regulate voltages accurately at the extremely low levels Haswell uses when idle. Given power supplies are overall worse performing and less efficient when used at extremely low load, it's not surprising that voltage regulation also takes a hit. You should probably look at replacing it with a Harwell-certified PSU, granted you don't necessarily need one but when you've combined it with extremely sensitive hard drives, it's the one thing I would look at first.

Given the current components in your machine a 400-450W power supply would be the most efficient, though 600-650w could be just about acceptable plus give you a bit of expandability for overclocking, etc. But even a 600w supply will be running at barely 5% load most of the time.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

does that mean the drives are permanently screwed now or will they work properly again if i get another psu?

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

They will work, they will just bug out on any but the most accurate of power rails. Any splitters, backplanes/hotswap trays, and modular cables can also make things worse unless everything is seated 100% securely. It's something that's been ****ing me off about Seagate drives for nearly ten years now. Even the "Designed for NAS" drives start bugging out on anything more than a 4-bay NAS.

I would recommend, just to try things out, turning off CPU power saving features, using the onboard graphics, and connecting just one drive, using the shortest & closest SATA power connector on the supply.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

sounds great. It ****es me off as well. It is one thing me making that mistake if i was building my own pc but i would expect an "award winning pc manufacturer" to know better. Thanks for the info.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

this has not been my experience with Seagate drives I run 3

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

That's sorta what you pay the extra for with "Award winning PC manufacturers" - the testing, certification and guaranteeing of everything working together. Big waste of money for enthusiasts IMO but I can understand why business who just cannot afford the hassle do it.

(Incidentally IIRC most "Award winning PC manufactuers" rarely put more than 2 drives into a system without a hefty £100+ backplane)

---------- Post added at 11:33 ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 ----------

I run 160.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

i have been running 3 drives all week no probs (two for raid 1 for OS and apps and a third for videos and other files) but when I went to add the additional two for raid 10 yesterday it threw a spaz fit

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

why in gods name do you run 160 drives that you know to be problematic? you know the definition of insanity?

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

They are not problematic in the environment I run them in.

Even if they were, one phone call to Dell and they are obliged to fix it within 4 hours.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

Mod Comment - can I remind CF'ers that using asterisks to avoid the Site swear filter is against Site T&Cs.

Repetition of this behaviour could lead to infractions being incurred.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

I didn't use asterisks to avoid the swear filter, the asterisks were put there by the swear filter.

And it wasn't even a swear word! (Well not to me anyway, the swear filter seems to disagree)

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

I didn't use asterisks either, it was the swear filter doing its job. Next time I will say I am urinated off :)

As an update though, just spoke to tech support and my poor pc is bring collected Monday and returned for repair. I don't know whether it will need a new psu or what. Pretty pants if it does because that means I can never connect more than 3 hdds rven though the psu has connectors for 6+ and the mb has 6 sata ports.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

You are destined to use a Core2 Duo 1.8Ghz with 1GB of memory and 500MB hard disk for the rest of your life <insert evil laugh here>

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

tell me about it. I have been jinxed from the start. My old pc had a soundblaster x-fi fatality soundcard in it which is awesome but it is pci and my new pc doesnt have any pci slots, only pci-e so rather than caughing up another £100+ for a decent soundcard (the pc cost me enough) I thought I would see what the onbaord sound was like. The onbard sound is pants and even though it is supposed to be 7.1 and I have got 7.1 speakers, the side speakers and subwoofer didnt work so I ordered a new soundcard from Amazon and they sent me the wrong one so I had to send that back.

I am a very impatient dude and I just want everything setup and running so I can go back to my gaming and everything else I do. I have been holding off for the last week because I wanted my new soundcard for gaming and I have reluctant to install too much knowing that I was doing to have to do it all again when I built the new array. They are picking my pc up Monday, the manufacturer will get it Tuesday (and I have been assured they'll fix it Tuesday), they'll either send it back Tuesday or Wednesday and I'll get it Wednesday/Thursday and then I need to install all my progs again. I think I am going to give them a ring Tuesday afternoon and have a chat with them about the psu and hard drives and discuss swapping them over because I cant be doing with this everytime I want to put a new hdd in (or anything else). When I was talking to the guy on the phone this morning it was so unstable that it wasn't even getting to the bios screen before it was restarting.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

Wait, was the PC ready-built for you or did you assemble the components yourself?

Personally I'd have returned the HDDs as they are the actual problem, other brands of HDDs would most likely have worked.

---------- Post added at 23:13 ---------- Previous post was at 23:08 ----------

Most onboard sound cards are pants. That said a few motherboards do have specifically over-engineered audio components and these are usually boasted about in the product marketing materials.

As for PCI sound cards - I have the same issue, and spend most of my time always upgrading to new motherboards ensuring there was at least 1 PCI slot. Now I've learnt you can get a PCI-express to classic PCI riser for not too much money I'm far less concerned.

Also for 7.1, bear in mind there are a number of incompatible standards for 7.1 speaker connections. Though the majority use the same type, not all do.

Re: cant install win 7, hdds making noise
 

neither, I suppose you could say it is a hybid :) I configured it from the ground up and they built it for me. I am going to have a nice chat about the hdds with them because the situation is just gay. Who builds hard drives which fail at the slightest sign of stress? I don't know whether they are going to have to replace the hard drives or not. Although the mb can see them if you go into diskpart during the windows installation and do a list disk it comes back saying it cant find anything. If they disks are still okay I am assuming they are going to have to replace the psu to remedy whatever the problem is. I wouldn't mind getting them to swap the hdds over to WD or something but the problem I have got is that I have bought three seagate hdds myself because I wanted four identical hdds for my raid 10. If they swap the two that came with the pc to another brand I am still screwed.


yeah I know, that is why I have gone back to Creativelabs, i put the new soundcard in before i started playing around with the hdds yesterday and it worked perfectly, the jacks on the back are colour coded and exactly the same as what was on my Fatality and the sounds comes through each speaker seperately and distinctly as it should.